


To live would be an awfully big adventure…

by Lullabylily



Category: Peter Pan (2003)
Genre: Dark, Implied or Off-stage Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lullabylily/pseuds/Lullabylily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter’s destiny to never grow up keeps him from living the greatest adventure of all: life. And it’s exactly what James Hook offers him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To live would be an awfully big adventure…

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ulciscor](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/20955) by Lizardspots. 



> The idea of this story kept on poking my brains, so much that I couldn’t focus on writing some other things I was working on. Style of the 2003 movie. Very dark.  
> Based on Lizardspots' gorgeous Hook/Peter art.

Hook was a part of Neverland just as much as Peter was. That is why Peter wasn’t surprised to find him alive again on his return to the island. A little paler than usual, after his third encounter with the Crocodile, but still very much alive and intend on getting revenge. 

A new ship, unoriginally called _The Jolly Roger 2_ was in place at the bay. Peter observed its workings and its crew for a while before flying to the other side of the island to find a sleeping place. 

Neverland couldn’t exist without Hook and his pirates. They made the balance of the tiny world that Peter had created. 

With no longer a hideout for safety, Peter spent the first couple of nights high up in trees, out of sight. On the third morning he woke up to find Hook sleeping at the bottom of the tree he had chosen, waiting for him to come down.

Peter wondered why he would want to be on the run from James Hook for the rest of his life. Without the lost boys as his sidekicks, it seemed like a lonely pastime. A sense of tiredness rushed over him like a gust of wind, chilling him and making him unexpectedly melancholic. He held up his arms in a sign of truce.

James Hook smiled at him. It was a nasty smile, for that was all Hook would ever manage. When one has committed so many evil deeds, wickedness shows even in the most innocent of gestures. He sheathed his sword and raised his hands, reciprocating the truce. 

"Why do you want to take my life, Hook?" It had always been a given; one of the many, unwritten rules of Neverland. Hook had started his campaign for Peter’s life before the hand, the crocodile and any other nuisance Peter and his lost boys may have caused. Peter couldn’t recall exactly what had started it.

"Peter, Peter," Hook started slowly, carefully choosing his words. "I don’t want your life," their was a trace of laughter in his voice, something disbelieving, as if it were incredulous that Hook would ever want to murder Peter Pan. 

"You see my boy" the captain continued, "you don’t have a life, dearest."

Peter frowned. He could fly, he could laugh, he could listen to stories that would make fill him to the brim with joy or stricken with fear or even tears. Yes, he could even cry. He felt alive, so why would Hook be suggesting otherwise?

"You’re just a boy, Peter. You will always be. Incapable of growing up, of feeling any emotion bigger than that of a fairy."

Peter gritted his teeth. He had felt things when Wendy had kissed him: great things, things bigger than himself. It had woken something in him. 

But it had felt like something that couldn’t last, something that couldn’t be a part of him. Already the memory was fading. Soon it would be gone.

"If you cannot feel, you are incapable of truly living life." Hook continued, the gravitas of his low, thunderous voice drawing in on the melancholy of Peter’s state. It sent chills up the boy’s spine.

"I don’t want your life, Peter Pan. What I want is your youth." James Hook sat down slowly. "I’m getting so old, Peter, chasing you makes me feel young again."

Peter wondered how one could _feel_ young. It sounded like something you either were or weren’t. 

"Just as running from me makes you feel alive." Hook continued. "In this world of make-believe we are both pretending."

Pretending. Wendy had blamed him for it. But Peter hadn’t cared that it was what his world was made of. And yet. Now Wendy had left him, taking her kiss away with her, he wanted something to feel real again.

"‘We can both get what we want, Peter. If we join forces."

Peter nearly laughed out loud. Joining forces with James Hook? Preposterous. 

But Hook was a clever man. His velvety voice had nearly succeeded in luring prudish Wendy into piracy. James Hook had always entranced Peter; the cruelty and the blackness of his soul mesmerizing the boy. Peter was only a boy. And in desperate need of guidance.

"Think about it Peter. I could make you feel. I could make you alive and in your presence, I would be young again."

Hook was trapping Peter with words. Words he didn’t understand. 

"You want feelings, don’t you Peter? That is why Wendy told you stories. To make you feel things."

Love – Cinderella and Prince Charming. Fear – pirates. Pain – Sleeping Beauty pricking her finger and falling in a deadly sleep. Hatred – the Queen poisoning Snow White. Revenge – Hook… His own life was a story. That conclusion did not come as a surprise.

"Without a storyteller, you are lost. Without a story, you have no part to play."

Peter barely managed to swallow. "I’ll fly to her window. I’ll still listen to her stories again."

Hook laughed softly, a mirthless sound. "You won’t spend your life pining at the windowsill of a grown woman? Someone who’s forgotten all about you and tells second-rate stories to her children’s children. Your place is here, Peter, in Neverland. The real world can’t sustain you for very long."

Peter was fighting the words. But words are hard to fight, especially when your whole world was made of them. "Are you saying you are going to tell me stories?"

Once again Hook laughed. "I’m not a _storyteller_." He spat out the word as if it were revolting. "I’m offering you the real thing, Peter. _Real_ feelings, not the make-believe emotions of storytelling."

"How?" Peter tried to bite away his curiosity, but curiosity was in his nature. 

"Wendy was right. Real feelings belong to the world of grown-ups." Hook began. And Peter felt that empty feeling again, that through leaving Wendy had taken away a part of himself. 

"But you, Peter, you can become a man without growing up or grow up without becoming a man. You can stay a boy and still learn about grown-up things, like feelings. If you let me teach you."

The words made Peter’s small world spin. Growing up without growing up? For the sake of feelings? 

Tinkerbell’s Peter would have laughed in Hooks face and tell him to take his bloody feelings and shove them somewhere the light didn’t shine. But Wendy and her hidden kiss haunted _this_ Peter. 

_How am I deficient?_ He’d asked her. _You’re just a boy._

But he hadn’t been just a boy when Wendy kissed him, and yet not quite a man either. Hook was offering him to treat him not like a boy but like a man. But he would always be a boy. He would be a boy pretending to be a man. 

It was exactly what he wanted.

Hook knew he’d won before Peter agreed to any of his terms. The captain issued a contract to ensnare Peter’s youth. Peter had never learned how to read. He could write his name because Wendy had taught him. It never occurred to Peter that he was signing something that would give him up to Hook irrevocably. Eternity had never sounded threatening to him. He’d beaten eternity a million times before breakfast; eternity bowed to him; it was created for him and his possession of eternal youth. In a pretend world, between a pretend boy and a pretend man, a make-believe eternity seemed entirely harmless. 

And yet. If Peter ever had a soul, he had just sold it away. If he didn’t have a soul… well, he’d sold off everything else.

Peter’s slowly signed the document. Focussing on the letters, one at a time, the way Wendy had taught him. 

As soon as he’d lifted the quill from the paper, a dark cloud swept over the sun and thunder roared. It looked as if Neverland would implode. It would have been better for Peter if it had. 

Peter looked up to the sky in alarm. Tinkerbell had skidded off in fear and he was left with Hook, the old captain’s face twisted in a menacing grin.

It started raining. Peter didn’t understand. The Neverland climate had always followed his moods; it frightened him that he’d suddenly lost control over it.

"We’ll find shelter on board of the ship." Hook motioned towards the bay. 

The shift in the weather had already made Peter uncertain about the game they were playing. But Hook’s request to join him on his ship was even more unsettling. Outside he could fly away, but once inside of the ship getting away from Hook would not be as easy. 

Hook noted Peter’s reluctance. "Peter, Peter, are you going to mistrust me already?"

Peter remained frozen on the spot.

"I command you to return to the ship with me." Motioning decidedly for Peter to follow him. "After all, it will be your new home while you are under my tutelage." 

Peter would have never thought of _The Jolly Roger_ as home. Surely he could not be expected to live amongst pirates, no matter what the stakes were.

"Don’t make me have to discipline you on our first day."

Discipline. Peter recalled Wendy telling him about teachers. They had sounded like nasty creatures; punishing you if you did not do as they told. If teacher/schoolboy was the game Hook wanted to play with him, he could play along. But he would be naughty, as all schoolboys were. Or so he recalled John telling him.

He did follow Hook onto the ship, in the end. Hook made it clear to his crew that Peter was on board as a guest and no one was to harm in him any way. He ate dinner among the pirates; some sort of fish stew. The men were dirty, and not in the way Peter and his boys had been after playing in the mud all day. They reeked. They also seemed rather amused than surprised at Peter’s presence.

"To what do we owe the _honour_ , Peter Pan?"

"Captain Hook looks very pleased that you have chosen to come and play with him."

Peter took in their bulging eyes as they leered at him, shoving away their sticky hands as they reached to touch the acorns sewn on his tunic. The alcohol in the air was almost enough to intoxicate Peter without the boy’s lips touching the liquor. 

He was almost glad that Hook took him aside stating they would continue their evening in private. Almost. Peter was still apprehensive. He hated not knowing the rules of the game they were playing; it meant he didn’t know how to break them.

"Do you want to know the real ending to Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Peter?"

Wendy and her stories suddenly seemed so far away. He had almost forgotten about the stories, the adventures, the villains and the happy endings. 

"I can show you what happens after the happy kiss."

The touch of Peter’s fingers ghosted across his lips

"The heroes of those _fairytales_ are grown-ups, not children, like you. But I can give you, the happily ever after of those grown-ups. I can make you _feel_ how amazing life really is."

Life. It all came back to that, didn’t it? He couldn’t truly live without growing up in one way or another.

Peter was in no way a stupid boy. He did not possess any real knowledge, having never gone to school. He never had a mother to warn him about going places with strangers. But even Peter did not fail to notice the danger in Hook’s voice. 

Peter ransacked his memory for details on the three fairytales Hook had mentioned. He was correct in stating they had all ended in a kiss. What happened after a kiss? Peter still recalled his very own kiss and the feeling of total bliss that had overpowered him. He didn’t really want to trust the captain but he realised he had already let him be led to the man’s personal chambers. It wouldn’t take very long for Peter to work out that there would be no way for him to leave those rooms until Hook had finished with him.

∼*∼*∼

Hook did live up to his end of the bargain. He did make Peter feel that night. Every one of his senses was assaulted by feelings. It would have been easier if he hadn’t felt. It would have been easier if it had just hurt; that it had hurt so much Peter could no longer feel anything else but pain. Pain was only the first feeling Peter identified. But as the night progressed he started discovering more complex emotions: shame, revulsion, self-loathing.

He felt every bit of it, every strap of flesh touching flesh. The hairy body of James Hook too intimately entwined with his pale, bare skin. 

He didn’t fight as the captain used his iron hand to scrape the insides of his thigh with the tip of the hook. Pain was easy.

It would have been easier if he had just closed his eyes so that he didn’t see. But he saw everything. He saw what he didn’t understand: lust, passion, need. Peter had never needed anything. He had never really felt the need for air, for food or water or love. But Hook was the epitome of need. And he needed Peter most of all.

Peter didn’t understand. He didn’t want to understand. Least of all did he understand how morning was able to dawn on Neverland when the night had felt like the last night of his life. He’d started living and already he felt more dead than he’d ever felt in his life.

But when he saw the sun seep in through the shutters he felt a surge of energy. He wanted to fly away, find Tinkerbell and hide again. Run away again. But when he reached the deck he couldn’t lift off. He felt heavier than he’d ever felt in his life and when his small feet pressed against the ground he didn’t take to the air. It was as if he was glued to the rotten planks of The Jolly Roger. 

Hook had lazily followed him onto the deck and was watching him with cruel amusement. "Where are your happy thoughts now, Peter?"

Peter’s face screwed into a tight, fierce scowl. He wanted up and away. Up and away! Why didn’t it work? 

"Have they flown away?" Hook laughed.

The ability to fly had left Peter. He’d never understood the meaning of being happy until the feeling had deserted him, leaving a hole inside that didn’t even fill up with sadness.

Peter didn’t back away when Hook approached him. He gritted his teeth keeping his eyes down on the ground beneath his feet that had become his prison.

Hook pressed the curve of his metal hand against Peter’s chin, forcing him to look into his eyes. The boy’s body instantly tensed, the cold, metal feel on his skin sending wild alarm signals to his brain. Peter identified the feeling: fear. He tried to bite it away, his arms clenched behind his back. It reminded him of the time he was so sure of himself to take on Hook with only one arm. How long ago that was. 

"Boy, why are you crying?" Hook mocked softly.

Peter hadn’t realized tears had formed in the corners of his treacherous eyes. He met Hooks glance without trying to pat them away. The captain was wrong about one thing: he was no longer a boy.


End file.
